This application makes reference to, incorporates the same herein, and claims all benefits accruing under 35 U.S.C xc2xa7119 from an application entitled Method For Monitoring System By Searching Screen Buffer earlier filed in the Korean Industrial Property Office on Dec. 22, 1998, and there duly assigned Serial No. 98-57381 by that Office.
1 Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for monitoring a system by searching a screen buffer, and more particularly, for detecting screen messages generated during a boot operation when the system is powered on or reset and then using the generated messages to determine the booting status and any abnormality of the system which is then reported to a remote system manager by using a server management board.
2 Description of the Background Art
In the case of an IBM PC compatible computer, a basic input/output system(hereinafter referred to as BIOS) performs the whole initialization and test of a system when the system is turned on. This test is usually referred to a Power On SelfTest(hereinafter referred to as POST). At the time of an operation of a POST, a BIOS outputs values from each step of the POST to certain input/output addresses. An input/output address is usually referred to as I/O port, and differs with respect to the BIOS and a system bus, e.g., for an ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) bus, an I/O address is 0X80; for an EISA (Extended Industry Standard Architecture) bus, an I/O address is 0X300.
A POST code is used at the early development of a system and a BIOS, and thereafter used for managing the system. In order to use the POST code, an I/O port which outputs the POST code is connected to a substantial device (a kind of buffer), and then either a program or a hardware using the POST code reads and uses values stored in the device.
Above described systems are degraded in compatibility. The reasons for failing to be compatible are as follows:
A. Since an I/O port differs according to a system bus, the configuration of different hardware logic is required in a server management board operated at each system bus;
B. A POST code can not be acquired in a server management board having no specially designed hardware logic;
C. An I/O port which can be applied to a PCI bus is not supported; and
D. A POST code is simply output as a hexadecimal value of one byte (0x00xcx9c0xFF) so that the meaning of each code cannot be recognized at once. Also, each code and its meaning are different according to a BIOS manufacturer.
Deterioration in compatibility caused by the above mentioned situations is a main cause of failure in commonality and compatibility, and is an obstacle in manufacturing a server management board applicable to a plurality of platforms.
Of interest to the present invention, and incorporated herein, are U.S. Pat. No. 5,852,720 to R. Scott Gready et al. entitled System For Storing Display Data During First Time Period Prior To Failure Of Computer And During Second Time Period After Reset Of The Computer which discusses a communication system where sequences of video screens sent from a host CPU (central processing system) to a video controller can be stored and subsequently retrieved by a terminal located remote from the host CPU; U.S. Pat. No. 5,471,617 to Scott C. Farrand et al. entitled Computer Management System And Associated Management Information Base and U.S. Pat. No. 5,367,670 to Ronald G. Ward et al. entitled Computer System Manager For Monitoring Events And Operating Parameters And Generating Alerts, both of which discuss and describe a xe2x80x9cserver management boardxe2x80x9d used in network communication systems; U.S. Pat. No. 5,257,384 to Scott C. Farrand et al. entitled Asynchronous Protocol For Computer System Manager which discloses a protocol for communicating messages between a system manager for a computer system and a remote facility; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,043,919 to Janet R. Callaway et al. entitled Method of And System For Updating A Display Unit which discloses that in personal computer-based systems, each personal computer includes a screen buffer which can be directly written to by a BIOS program associated with the respective personal computer or an application program being executed on the computer, and a technique for monitoring dynamically changing host computer screen activity and transmitting the screen updates to a remote system whereby applications write directly to a screen buffer associated with the host computer.
An object of the present invention is to provide a method for monitoring a system by searching a screen buffer (or frame buffer) readily applicable to IBM compatible devices without the configuration of any hardware on a server management board, and more particularly, by monitoring system messages written in the screen buffer of the system at the time of operation of a POST.
To accomplish the above object of the present invention, a device of the present invention includes steps of: reproducing the data of a screen buffer from the video RAM into a temporary buffer in a program; searching for particular BIOS messages in the temporary buffer reproduced from the data of the screen buffer; and reporting the BIOS messages found during the search to a remote system manager.